


Dulcis Hiemem

by softiebee



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Trope Challenge [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Snowed In, so many of these have background sarchengsey and im not even sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softiebee/pseuds/softiebee
Summary: Ronan and Adam get snowed in at the Barns.





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: snowed in
> 
> this is a work of fiction. all characters belong to maggie steifvater and the raven cycle series.

Adam Parrish hated the snow. It made the streets of Henrietta slick and dangerous, and the dirt path leading into the trailer park became impassible. His father would stay inside, which meant that Adam would stay outside, shoveling five foot clearings around the double-wide as snow soaked into his shoes. More often than not, when he came back in, his father was asleep in his chair, and his mother was holding her arm under the sink. 

It was different now. He had to remind himself of that, had to repeat it every morning when he woke up. Fear was a hard habit to break. 

Snow treated Noah differently than it treated the rest of them. Adam supposed this was to be expected, considering Noah was a ghost, but it was strange to see his footprints in the snow and only the half-transparent mirror images of his feet, and when they went back inside, nothing on Noah was cold and nothing on him was wet. 

“Freak,” Ronan commented, stomping the snow from his boots. Noah shrugged.

It was different now, here, as Blue pulled the scarf from Henry’s shoulders, as Gansey banged around in the cupboards for powdered cocoa, as Ronan leaned over to flick Adam’s red knuckles, hard. Different. Better. Reconciling the two worlds was easier said than done.

“What’s the plan, Gansey boy?” Henry pushed himself up onto the counter, leaning back on his wrists. Gansey hooked his fingers through the handles of several mugs at once and then almost dropped all of them on the counter. 

“I don’t know. We could play Scrabble,” he suggested, then frowned, running his thumb over a chip in one of the mugs. Ronan snagged another one from behind his back and started trying to carve something into the bottom with his set of keys. He seemed to have a constant need to take something and leave a mark on it, in one way or another; Ronan Lynch was not easily forgettable, but it was possible he engineered that himself. 

Adam cast a worried glance toward the window. “I might have to go,” he said reluctantly. “It’s getting bad, and I don’t want to get stuck.”

“Ah.” Gansey looked uncomfortable. “About that. Henry and I were shoveling out the sidewalk a bit, and I think your car might be slightly… under the pile.” At Adam’s widening eyes, he added quickly, “We’ll dig it out again tomorrow. But considering the snow and the light right now, I think it would be best if you stayed anyway. We don’t have to play Scrabble! We could watch a movie, or-”

“No, thanks.” Ronan tucked his mug behind the coffee maker and stretched his arms over his head. “I think I’d rather drink my own ashes than sit through a movie with the three of you.” He threw a disgusted, if affectionate, look to where Henry had his fingers linked with Blue’s on the counter, and tossed his keys from hand to hand. “Want a ride, Parrish?”

“Yeah, actually.” Adam scrambled for his things, and Gansey slipped into a pout. He never used to pout so much - there was a different word for it that was sophisticated and expensive, like the rest of Gansey - but Adam guessed it was just rubbing off from Henry. “Sorry, man.”

Ronan plucked his jacket off the hook and shrugged it over his shoulders. “Use protection,” he said over his shoulder, kicking the door open for Adam, who noted that he was the only one blushing and ducked his head, following Ronan out into the storm. 

They walked in silence. The roads were fairly covered already, but Adam didn’t doubt that Ronan’s car would have either snow tires or some kind of dream flying ability. What he did doubt was Ronan’s capacity of sight; the snow was coming down so hard that it was difficult to see ten feet in front of him, let alone the idea of driving. 

As they approached, it became clear that the BMW was, somehow, well and truly separate from both the curb and the mounds of snow that had been plowed and re-plowed. Unsurprisingly, Ronan was unfazed by this, and stepped into the car with ease. Adam, however, in trying to get over a large bank of snow, planted his foot in the wrong place and slipped over, sunk in up to the knee. Ronan snorted but offered a hand anyway, serving only to make Adam’s face redder as he made his way around the car to the passenger side. 

“Did they start venting heat into your cardboard box?” Ronan asked, after he had started up the engine and pulled into the road. The tires were doing surprisingly well, despite a distinct lack of chains, but Adam still gripped his hands over his knees tight enough to turn his knuckles pale. 

“No,” he responded distractedly, “it’s not in the church budget and I said I would be alright with blankets.”

“Huh.”

Preoccupied by the speed at which the BMW’s windshield wipers were moving, Adam didn’t respond until Ronan turned right instead of left at the intersection.

“Where are you going? St. Agnes is that way, jackass.”

“I know very well where the church is, but thanks for the commentary,” Ronan replied dryly. “We’re going to the Barns.”

“Well, sure, _you_ are. Where _I_ live is back there, at the turn you just missed.” 

The car skidded suddenly, and Adam grabbed onto the sides of his seat. Ronan had hit the brakes. They came to a halt in the middle of the road, and Ronan leaned harshly over the gearshift. “I’m not fucking letting you freeze to death in this shit. It’s either the Barns or Monmouth. Pick an evil.”

Adam glared, but after a minute of an icy staring contest, he let himself fall back into his seat and glared at the window, instead. The BMW’s engine clicked into gear again, and Henrietta winked by in between snowflakes. It was getting so dark and so dense that it was a wonder to Adam how Ronan was able to keep the car on the road, and then it occurred to him that Ronan probably knew the drive to the Barns better than he would ever know the one to Monmouth.

When they pulled into the driveway, Ronan didn’t even try to make a clean stop. Instead, he just slammed the brakes and waited until the car wasn’t moving, then pulled up the hood on his jacket and made a run for the door, Adam in quick pursuit.

“Fuck,” Ronan said, more as a passive observation than anything else, peeling himself out of his jacket. There was snow in the lining, cramped in the outline of Ronan’s skin. It was in Adam’s, too, and behind his ears and in the collar of his shirt. He looked at Ronan, trying to appear more annoyed than tired, but Ronan was focused on shaking the ice out of his sleeves. “Listen, I’m going to shower. Do you want one?” He was already on his way to the stairs and didn’t look over his shoulder to see Adam nod before continuing, “You can use the bathroom down here. There are towels, and probably some of Matthew’s clothes. They’ll fit you.”

Adam was about to thank him, but the door slammed shut before he could say a word.

-

Adam was not one to accept charity. One of the _things_ about Adam was that he was stubbornly self-made, built up from dirt and dust, blood and sweat. But he couldn’t deny that the water at the Barns, even in the middle of a snowstorm, was deliciously hot and seemingly endless. Each time he came close to stepping out of the stream, he reminded himself that there was nothing wasting and found another patch of cold on his skin. Eventually, he shut off the water and reluctantly stepped onto the tile floor, pulling a towel from the rack and scrubbing it through his wet hair. The mirror was white with steam.

As Ronan had said, there were some of Matthew’s clothes in the cabinets, and they did kind of fit. Matthew was still taller than Adam, and might even be taller than Ronan, so his shirt slipped down past Adam’s hips and his pants bunched at Adam’s ankles. Glad at least for the softness and warmth, Adam draped the towel across his shoulders and went out into the living room.

It was strange to think of Ronan here. Not that Adam hadn’t done it before - his mind slipped to Ronan and to the Barns more often than anything else - but he couldn’t quite picture Ronan before all the edges on him became sharp glass, couldn’t see him shorter, softer, the way Gansey had. There was something about the Barns that made Adam think about how Ronan must have been then, how different, or maybe the change had been more honest than altering. His fingers skimmed along the mantel and caught on a picture frame.

“Nosy.”

Adam looked up over his shoulder to see Ronan at the top of the stairs and let his hand drop to his side. Ronan gave him a wicked half-smile.

“Want a tour?”

“I’ve _been_ here,” Adam grumbled, but climbed the stairs anyway to join Ronan on the platform. Despite having _been_ here, Adam knew he hadn’t seen much of the main house. He wasn’t entirely sure Ronan had seen all of it himself. 

He seemed to have a relationship with everything in each room, though; he was carelessly affectionate with the various toys and trinkets in the corners of his and Matthew’s, and treated the master with articulated respect. It didn’t slip past Adam that he skipped over Declan’s room entirely, paying more attention to the bookshelves that lined the halls and the closets full of linens and stacks of paper, but he followed in wordless wonder, drinking in as much as he could of the estate. 

They ended up back in the kitchen, where Ronan started to pull various jars out of drawers and filled a pot with milk. 

“What are you doing?” Adam was wary of culinary expeditions; at Monmouth, they more often than not ended with a scorched stove and the smoke alarms going off, and, if Ronan was having a good day, some variety of charred object that usually ended up in Noah’s room.

“Making cocoa, dipshit. Have you seen what’s happening outside? Warrants a hot drink, if you ask me.” Ronan spooned powder into two mugs and crouched to dig around in one of the drawers. He peered over his shoulder at Adam and asked, “Do you care if there are marshmallows?”

“No,” Adam replied dubiously, and Ronan nodded. 

“Good. Because these are fucking disgusting.” He chucked a green-veiled bag into the garbage can and went back to the mugs, pouring the hot milk over the powder and handing Adam one to stir. When Adam sipped it, it was better than he expected; he’d only ever had cocoa made with water before, and this tasted rich and went right to the bottom of his stomach, sitting comfortably there and warming him from the inside out. 

“Good, right?” Ronan took a monster gulp and wiped the corner of his mouth with one hand. “Not my recipe.”

Begrudgingly, Adam nodded, and took another long sip. Seemingly satisfied by this, Ronan leaned over to turn off the stove and moved the pot to the sink. It was entirely pitch black out the window now, and Adam, upon pressing a finger to the glass, nearly hissed at how cold it was. By contrast, the Barns was warmer than anywhere Adam had been in months. He decided it was dream magic. Niall Lynch, giving gifts that kept giving. 

The thought pushed Adam’s attention back to Ronan, who had wandered into the living room and sprawled across the couch. Chainsaw perched on the cushions, and he let her drink from his mug. 

“Gross,” Adam remarked, folding himself into a spindly shape not dissimilar to a rock. Ronan flipped him off without thought or care and opened a paperback in his lap. The silence grew, but it was comfortable, and Adam found himself absently taking in the curve of Ronan’s cheek and the darkness of his eyebrows and the shock of his charcoal lashes spread under the hollow of his eye. He was edges, yes, a broken glass boy, but there was something else about him that itched under Adam’s skin and made it hard to tear his eyes away. 

“Going to sit there and stare all night?” Ronan’s voice was surprisingly quiet, but still amused and slightly smug, and maybe that was what prompted Adam to say, without thinking,

“Don’t have any other plans.”

Ronan stilled. 

“I mean,” Adam continued, feeling ridiculous and cut off from himself and all semblance of reason, “what else…?”

It was then that Ronan carefully set his mug on the floor and leaned all the way across the couch and practically fell onto Adam’s mouth. He sat up and pulled himself forward and tried again, and Adam pulled him in by the chin, connecting their lips with a surety that he hadn’t known he possessed. He _knew_ Ronan’s mouth, knew his way around from months of watching, and kissing Ronan for the first time didn’t feel like the first time, it felt like a reminder: _this is what his jaw feels like. This is what his nose feels like. This is what his lips feel like. This, this, this._

Ronan pulled back with a gasp and dug his fingers lightly into the skin at Adam’s waist; somehow, Matthew’s massive t-shirt had ridden up, or maybe Ronan or Adam had pushed it there. Seeing him this close only made Adam want to look at him for days at a time. Instead, he pulled him in again by the back of his neck.

-

Later, once Ronan had piled them with blankets and turned off the lights, Adam was studying the smaller things he could find on Ronan with him so close up. Empty piercings in his ears. Soft hairs on his temples. Cracks on his lips. 

“Don’t think you’ll be able to get home tomorrow,” Ronan commented. Adam raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve got some shit company.”

“Shut up,” Ronan said, and kissed him on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> okay this is *by far* the best fic i've written for this series so far. at least, in my opinion. deadass i got home and wrote for five hours and this is the product. thank you so much to those of you following this series!! you're the sweetest and i hope you all had great days  
> for people who are confused ("why are their fics showing up so much in the raven cycle tag? why are they all short and unedited and need improvement?") im doing a 30 day writing challenge (!!!) and posting one fic every day. this fic is day 4; tomorrow (day 5) will be based in a fake relationship. 
> 
> i would love u forever if you left me comments and/or kudos!! you can find me on tumblr at c-beswater.


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